In my heart there is no suburb of Paris that’s quite as grotty, as dishevelled of shopfronts and littered of gutters as Kilburn, one of northwest London’s most insipid of areas that a man could ever depressingly call home. Paris, in my heart, is forever bathed in golden sunshine; the boulevards are lined with neatly pruned hedges and small tress bearing sweet fruit; beautiful girls bicycle their way to and from a job that’s just perfect, shooting lusciously lustful looks this way and that; a roadside café sings to the sound of accordion-led local folk music emanating from a back room or open second-floor window.

It’s in this environment that I imagine Cyann & Ben to mostly spend their days and nights; I can’t dream for even a second that their adopted hometown might, somewhere, harbour a borough quite as miserable as the one the four-piece – three gentlemen, one lady – find themselves performing within this evening. Had Time Out taken into account a live venue’s neighbourhood – forgetting convenient transportation links – there’s no way the admittedly still salubrious Luminaire would have scooped their award for Live Venue of the Year a while back. Cyann & Ben – so called because two of their four are named just that – shimmer and shake out their rippling riffs to an audience entranced, an audience gifted temporary escape from the filth outside.

This is post-rock to some; others realise that simply playing a guitar or two a little slower than rock and roll teaches doesn’t necessarily make the noise such an approach creates comparable, particularly, to Godspeed You! Black Emperor or their bearded ilk. Although two-thirds of the males onstage tonight could do with a shave, you’d never equate them with the chin-strokers so often sighted at more artsy events, the ATPs of this world. It’s a couple of days’ on-the-road growth, not the product of a consciously determined decision.

But to the music: it’s wonderful, light and airy when it must be and seductively sensual in the calms before the storms. Said storms don’t rage as wildly as C&B’s more-bombastic peers – those forsaking control for volume – but toss and tumble their chosen few victims, those up close and personal and not chattering away at the back (the signs tell you to shut up, FFS), nonetheless. At times all senses but that focusing on the nuances of each plucked-at string and held key, every subtle change in pitch that turns a song on its head, albeit for a few seconds only, and spreads a rash of raised hairs from elbow to wrist, are detuned and ignored. Eyes shut without eyelids closing, feet are stony still without the need for concrete shoes. It’s transporting stuff: the individual is lifted upwards and out of the room, allowed to descend only once a hush falls alongside them.

Selections from their most recent collection Sweet Beliefs and its preceding Sunny Morning EP are perhaps obviously the most warmly received offerings this evening – the night is a celebration of both Ever Records, who released said discs and whose Cortney Tidwell also performs magically, and its parent company !K7, which has recently turned 21 – but at no moment does a lull strangle proceedings. Quality is maintained, and consistency from song to song is paramount to the set’s success. A round of applause and no few thumbs up later, it’s clear these Parisians have impressed those wise enough to step inside from Kilburn’s dank main drag.

Paris? I’ve never even been there, but until I visit the music of Cyann & Ben will aid my own sweet belief that the city is one untainted by the mess of modernity.